Estonian hackathon Garage48 had a prolific weekend in Tartu, where a number of new innovative start-up firms were set up in a space of two days.

Garage48 hackathonis an event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers, project managers collaborate intensively on software projects within 48 hours over the weekend – and the aim is to set up working firms by the end of the weekend. Garage48 event series started in Estonia in April 2010 and have since expanded to other countries in Northern Europe, and even Africa. All Garage48 events are held in English and have up to 100 international participants. Participants have different skills, ranging from software development to design, marketing, sales and entrepreneurship. Usually taking place in Tallinn, it was 3rd of its series in the university town Tartu.

Garage48 Tartu 2012 winner Matemaatik is a collection of math problems for teachers to export and use

Tom Godber (CTO and co-founder of London based mobile ticketing provider Masabi) said that the most impressive thing for him was to see that the winner was a team he had written off at the beginning based on their one line pitch. “But they turned round an excellent site serving a real need in a tiny amount of time,” said Tom Godber. Matemaatik impressed the jury the most with a web solution that helps teachers to export and use math exercises. Matemaatik came the winner of the 3rd Garage48 Tartu event.

From 25 ideas pitched on Friday, 9 ideas managed to attract a team and started product development and all the ideas presented their working prototype by Sunday.

The 3rd Garage48 event in Tartu, co-organized and hosted by Tartu University, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences had a high level of specialists as mentors and in the jury, including Tom Godber and Ed Howson (Masabi), Ragnar Sass (Garage48, Pipedrive), Priit Salumaa (Garage48, Mooncascade, MobileMonday Estonia), Tanel Vari and Rainer Paat (Skype), Dmitri Sarle (ArcticStartup).

Teams and winners were:

MATEMAATIK – Collection of Math problems for teachers to export and use. Currently, teachers don’t know which problems are more useful than others in a given topic – rankings will solve that. Having Math problems online allows teachers to create new problems, using the web’s capabilities (like adding videos).

AJAPAIK(mobile app) – uses crowd sourcing to collect location metadata and contemporary rephotographs for historic photos from public collections. During the weekend at Garage48, they were building native apps for iOS, Android so that users can more easily rephotograph historic photos at Ajapaik.

E-GARANTII – Piles of paper receipts are collected in drawers and wallets all around the world. Until now it was believed that this is the only way for preserving valid warranties. E-Garantii is trying to prove this misconception wrong.

BATTLEGRID.ORG – Augmented Reality web application to extend the experience of tabletop games (e.g Dungeons & Dragons, Battleships, Monopol etc.). Whether you are friendly team of players or professional gamers – BattleGrid can automatically visualise your monsters and creatures for you.

MOMOTE – Momote lets you decide what music is played at your favourite pub. This is accomplished by real-time mobile interaction with socially controlled jukebox. Want your favourite tune to replace Justin Bieber on the dancefloor? Let’s make the next bar experience better!

MASHDAY.COM – Mashday is a platform of open calendars for users to find their most relevant events and see them in their existing calendars. The site has categories for different events, such as national holidays or high school vacations, which are ranked according to their popularity of usage and suggested to users according to their defined profiles.

TOP THREE – Long lists don’t work. Top Three is helping people to share their Top 3 preferences in a visual way. It’s a twitter for pinterest.

CULTUREMETER – Virtual environment for evaluation of culture. Votes of audience and experts can be crucial aspect in getting funding from local governments or entrepreneurs.

BETONIT – they are building a platform to help mobile game developers monetize on their product by enabling betting in mobile multiplayer games. Betonit is building an easy to implement SDK (software development kit) for developers to incorporate in their games. The player can then register an account with them, transfer funds to his/her account and then go to the game and bet real money in a multiplayer game against a real-life opponent.

Garage48 Tartu 2012 was sponsored by tech giants Nokia and Skype, as well as Hedman Partners, Fortumo, and Creative Mobile.

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